Body, Bone, Soul: Necromancy in Tarfel

Two posts in one day! I better pace myself or I'll collapse from exhaustion. Truth is I've got a minor backlog of 21-ish posts at completion levels ranging from 0% to 25%. I try to knock out one every so often.

Carnomancy

Carnomancy is the magic of the flesh. It makes wounds heal or fester, it restores withered limbs or makes healthy ones rot on the body. Carnomancy is the most common form of healing magic and also the least restricted.  Carnomancers are also employed as animal and monster trainers, using magic to sharpen or dull some biological responses; they are also sometimes found working as torturers or loansharks, able to mete out and heal injuries. Carnomancers with an interest in undead can animate dead flesh, creating stereotypical zombies. Such zombies are sluggish because the magic coursing through them only animates their flesh, not their bones; without a skeleton to support it, undead flesh is limited to a slug-like locomotion. Needless to say, such activities are not well-regarded both for their desecration of the dead and the risk of disease.

Osseomancy

Osseomancy is the magic of bones. It restores bones to their original condition, reshapes them and strengthens them, or warps into instruments of torture or violence. Ossemancers in civilized lands mainly work as bonesetters and surgeons. Like Carnomancers, some Osseomancers get involved in seedier business relations but they demand higher pay than Carnomancers. Their cost makes criminal Osseomancers somewhat of a novelty. The stereotypical undead created by Osseomancers are magically animated skeletons of all kinds. In most civilizations, Ossemancers make a point of avoiding the animation of humanoid remains, preferring to animate animal skeletons. Skeletons never cause as much panic as a zombie but they aren't exactly popular either.

Animancy

Animancy is the magic of souls. It alone is the only component of Grand Necromancy that is nigh-universally outlawed, hated, and feared. Animancers manipulate souls, changing personalities, imposing terrible curses or dubious blessings, and denying souls their eternal rest by turning them into monstrous spirit-things. Wraiths are one of the many vile creations of Animancy.

Least Necromancy

Least Necromancy is the most common form of "True" Necromancy. Least Necromancers have a knowledge of both Carnomancy and Osseomancy as well as mundane sciences such as surgery and medicine. Least Necromancers rarely tend to be the types who raise an army of undead or what have you; they tend to operate openly as healers and secretly use undead they create as servants, orderlies, and test subjects for treatments that are too dangerous or illegal to practice on living people. The only dark side of the Least Necromancers is that they need bodies for all those assistants and test subjects. They acquire them most often by grave-robbing, although some don't mind murder either. Greater Zombies (or Fast Zombies as the unimaginative call them) are an example of a Least Necromancer's craft.

Lesser Necromancy

Lesser Necromancy is generally what people are thinking of when they hear "Necromancy". Lesser Necromancers know Animancy and either Osseomancy or Carnomancy, but never both. Lesser Necromancers can (and do) create small armies of undead. Because they taint Carnomantic and Osseomantic magic with Animantic elements, most undead they create tend to possess an instinctual hatred of the living and kill them whenever possible. Lesser Necromancers who master Animancy and Ossoemancy may eventually transform themselves into Liches; those who pursue Animancy and Carnomancy tend to create monstrosities such as the Blood and Flesh "Elementals".

Grand Necromancy

If Lesser Necromancy is the popular face of the discipline in the eye of the public, Grand Necromancy is the popular (and most feared) face of Necromancy among Mages. Grand Necromancers unify Animancy, Carnomancy, and Osseomancy in a terrible synthesis. While Least Necromancers tend to be eccentrics and Lesser Necromancers are little more than local nuisances, Grand Necromancers can topple entire kingdoms. Thankfully, few individuals are focused and skilled enough to master all three of this discipline's components and so they are thankfully rare. Grand Necromancers can create exceptionally powerful undead such as Mohrgs, Mummies, and Vampires.

The Golden Man and The Mighty Destroyer

One of the principal deities of the Tarfel setting is the Sun-God. He is known as Ialtes in the Elvish languages and is the patron of the Day Elves. Humans know him instead as Yalt in Aumsland (an area analogous to Western Europe) and Yalil or Yalel in the Sunlands and the Citadel Kingdoms (analogous to Northern Africa and the Near East, respectively). Ialtes/Yalt has two distinct aspects or modes of being, one being a creative aspect and the other a destructive aspect.

The Golden Man

The creative aspect of Yalt is The Golden Man. He embodies the positive aspects of the sun: Warmth, light, and good temperature for harvests. His connection with harvests has also created an association of him with wealth. Many merchants therefore spread his cult on their journeys. He is depicted as a gold-skinned hairless male Elf or Human (depending on his worshipers). His physique his always that of a well-fed individual which in practice ranges from healthy-looking to rather fat. His expression consists of closed eyes and a serene smile. The Golden Man isn't widely worshiped among the Day Elves or the Humans of the Citadel Kingdoms because of the constant warfare these groups find themselves in. He is most commonly worshiped by the Humans of Aumsland and he has a small but growing cult in many of the Sunland nations thanks to merchant-missionaries.

The Mighty Destroyer

The destructive aspect of Yalt is The Mighty Destroyer. He embodies the negative aspects of the sun: Drought, dryness, skin diseases, and fires caused by drought. He is also revered as a war-god because of this destructive bent. He is depicted as an exceptionally powerful male Human or Elf with a male lion's head. His mouth is almost universally open in manner suggesting a snarl or growl. The Day Elves worship Ialtes almost exclusively in this aspect, as do the Humans of the Citadel Kingdoms. Unlike the cult of The Golden Man, the cult of The Mighty Destroyer is wholly unconcerned with proselytizing. 

The Powers that be

One thing that always puzzled me about D&D 3.5 was the separation between evil gods (like Hextor) and evil entities that weren't gods but could still grant spells (like Yeenoghu). It always seemed to me that at the level of power there was no real difference between the two.

In this post, I'm going to describe my schema for how those concepts fit together. This schema is my default for generic/traditional fantasy and the mindset I use when thinking about stuff for my Tarfel setting (which is in desperate need of development). I don't have a relevant picture so here's a Pie Fiend.

Powers are supernatural, non-mortal entities that can channel their energy into magical gifts given to mortal creatures. Some Powers are also Gods (see below); Powers who aren't Gods are usually Elemental Princes, Demon Lords, Archcelestials, or other powerful beings.

Gods are Powers who have a cosmological function or concept that they work to maintain.  How they keep these functions/concepts working is something unfathomable to non-gods. Even Gods that are in charge of things like slacking off or partying naked spend most of their time making sure that their concepts don't break down.

If a God dies then a cosmic imbalance occurs: either his function/concept stops working entirely or it goes out of control. For example, if a God of death is destroyed then the world perhaps death doesn't occur and all creatures continue to live on in horrifically wounded bodies (a lack of death); alternatively, everyone is dying from papercuts, splinters and scratches (an excess of death).

No matter happens, the death of a God is a very bad thing for everyone. It can take centuries for the quasi-sentient divine spark to find a new host and restore cosmological balance. For this reason, the Gods seek to conquer their enemies and bind them in divine pacts of servitude rather than kill them. Religious wars in the mortal world are often part of an indirect strategy to weaken specific gods.

Non-divine Powers have affinity for and limited power over some functions and concepts but aren't responsible for maintaining them; their deaths and their existences have little impact on cosmological balance.

Gods also have religions dedicated to them and a hierarchical priesthood of some sort as well. Depending on the God's personal attitudes the hierarchy might be a rigid structure resembling military commands or government bureaucracies or it could a very loose structure more akin to a social club. Magical ability often indicates the favor of Gods but doesn't necessarily give priests a higher authority. Gods tend to have a large number of worshipers and the support of local governments.

Gods also have Precepts, general edicts issued by the Gods themselves to do certain things ("Give to the poor from the bounty of your harvest") and avoid others ("Never extend or accept a truce with an Undead"). All Gods require their worshipers to follow their Precepts, although they generally don't notice transgressions unless these occurring on a large scale (such as whole region) or committed by those the Gods have empowered. Gods don't usually change their Precepts or declare new ones.

Supplementing Precepts are Doctrines, mortal teachings derived from Precepts but focusing on practical interpretations. So for example a doctrine derived from "Give to the poor from the bounty of your harvest" would be that only plants that can be used as food or clothing truly need to be shared while intoxicants like tobacco do not.

Gods rarely bestow magical gifts on those who worship them and devoutly follow their precepts; even more rarely a God may offer a non-worshiper such gifts if he agrees to convert to the worship of his new patron.

Non-divine Powers in contrast do not have Precepts or Doctrines; They offer their gifts to those who seem to fit with their interests or even at random. The contract is often simple: In exchange for the gift of magic to be used unconditionally as the mortal sees fit, the mortal must fulfill one task chosen by the Power at some point in the future.

The task given varies on the Power bestowing the gift. Fiendish Powers tend to choose particularly gruesome acts like cannibalism or torturing a sapient being to death. Celestial Powers instead select grueling but benevolent tasks such as giving every orphan in the city a loaf of bread or a long pilgrimage to many sacred sites.

The general train of thought is that once a mortal tastes the power and realizes that the tasks is easy to fulfill, the mortal will be tempted to make more pacts for more gifts. The Powers hope that this process will corrupt (or purify, in the case of Celestial Powers) the mortal and increase their own influence. Unlike the priests of Gods, the priests of non-divine Powers base their hierarchies on the magical gifts they've received from their patrons.

A third group along with Powers and Gods are Idols. An Idol is a non-Power that is worshiped. Idols may have Precepts and Doctrines but can't bestow gifts the way real Powers can, although some manage to simulate this with skilled applications of sorcery.

A final note is that Gods are nearly omniscient in regard to their function/concept but have difficulty focusing on and observing the mortal realm. Most of the time, Gods just can't tell anything is going on unless it's a big happening like a major war or a massive revolt. Gods mainly collect information from their Servitors (Outsiders created from the souls of the faithful) and from those they have bestowed their gifts upon. Sometimes Gods will also send Avatars, physical manifestations made of their own essences, to survey the mortal world. Many Gods prefer Avatars because they get to experience the realities of the mortal realm directly, without the lens of another mind altering their perceptions.

Non-divine Powers find it relatively easy to perceive the mortal realm, although their scope is usually limited to a single region at a time. These Powers also lack the ability to create Servitors. so they are limited to obtaining information from their few gifted followers or their Avatars.

Elves of Tarfel

Yay a new post after a million years! This semester is really hard .___.

Spinning off of my post about a new campaign setting I'm cobbling together, here's an extended look at the Elves of Taurion Effel/Tarfel.

The Ancients of The Elderwood

The Elderwood is a vast, ancient forest dominating the north-central area of the Civilized Countries. Within it are strange beings that combine Elvish and Plant-like features. The "Elder Elves" lack any ability to speak. The most Elvish among them have growths resembling moss or vine-like plants and have brown blood; they are standoffish but will not attack unless threatened. As one journeys farther into the Elderwood, the elves become more plantlike. The deepest specimens retrieved have bark-like skin and green blood with the consistency of slime or syrup. Elder Elves are curious in that they only seem to eat raw meat; a few specimens were taught to eat cooked meat but they only did so reluctantly. The civilized Elves of the Day, Night, and Gloom cultures are completely disinterested them, viewing the Elders as results of parallel evolution or degenerate breeding (or both according to some works by Elvish scholars). Aside from Human researchers, the only other group interested in them are the Serpentine, who capture them for experimentation or execute them outright.

Day Elves and Night Elves

Although the Serpentine describe the Elvish conquest in the same manner as an outbreak of rodents, with disorganized butchery and senseless violence, the Elves insist that their conquest was organized and commanded by a cosmic deity. After the overthrow of the Serpentine, the Elves prosper for thousands of years until the Great Schism. Wicked Elves lusting for power and wealth forsook their patron deity and turned to an opposing power, shattering their empire with civil war and apostasy.
Those are the facts that both sides agree on. Additional details are highly contentious. One group, the Day Elves, insist that their original deity was Ialtes (worshiped by Humans as "Yalt"), the lion-headed sun god. The apostates who caused the Great Schism turned from him to the worship of Sethon (known as "Thoom" to Humans), the snake-like deity of night, shadows, and lies. The other contingent calls themselves the Night Elves and claim that it was Sethon who was their patron in prehistoric times and that cult of Ialtes is the real apostasy. Despite their differences in history and religion, their dress, societies, rituals, and social mores remain strikingly similar. Nevertheless, they consider being called by the names of their hated brethren to be the greatest insult which combined with their lack of differentiation in regards to speech and clothing insofar as non-Elves can perceive them, have resulted in the deaths of many Humans and Dwarves who have misidentified them.

 

 The Deep Elves

 After the Great Schism, the largest Day Elf bloc was that ruled by Abal, son of a regional governor named Hased. Abal was the first king of what is now identified as the Hasedite Kingdom. Abal had eight successors over the next five centuries. The last of these was Tabel. During his reign a vast conspiracy among political and mercantile elites that had been brewing since the reign of his father, King Awen, began an open revolt. The elites manage to rally peasants to themselves with promises of more freedom, limited land redistribution, and the gift of a single non-Elf slave to every household.
In desperation, Tabel turned to the Deep Dwarves for aid. The Deep Dwarves had crushed an expansionist campaign by King Lutel two centuries earlier in the hinterlands of the Fang Mountains and following their victory entered into a non-aggresion pact with the Hasedite Kingdom. Tabel used Deep Dwarf mercenaries to supplement his troops and crushed the rebellious elites. Following this, the vanquished were paraded through the capital and both the regular Elvish army and the Dwarven mercenaries participated in the King's three-day victory feast. According to the legend, on the last day of the feast the high priest of Ialtes, an aged Elf named Baru, chided Tabel saying that he had enough rabble-rousing and that tomorrow at noonday the captives should be ritually executed for defying the sovereign chosen by the sun deity. Tabel is said to have laughed and casually informed the priest that the captives were leaving that night with the Dwarves; Tabel had nowhere near enough treasure to hire such a huge contingent of mercenaries so he agreed to turn over all captives as slaves to the Dwarves. The high priest Baru stood up and invoked the gravest curse possibly against the King, that his heirs should all die and he and all those related to him by blood be rendered infertile, for his offense of denying blood sacrifice to Ialtes and for selling his kin into the hands of lesser beings.. That very night, the Dwarves marched back to their lands in the Fang Mountains with their new slaves in tow. This episode is referred to as the "Sin of King Tabel" in Elvish histories. The Elvishy slaves eventually won emancipation and developed a new culture based on a synthesis of Dwarven
and Elvish attitudes. These former slaves are now called Gloom Elves. They no longer worship Ialtes but have instead adopted traditional Dwaven deities and ancestor worship. They also maintain a great deal of enmity toward both the Night Elves (their traditional enemies as Day Elf descendants) and the Day Elves (who are viewed as traitors and tyrants).

A Whole New World

Picture this: You're a teenager who has been voraciously devouring D&D 3.5 books. You've recently found out about the OGL. You decide to yourself "I'll write something and sell it!" Then you realize that writing RPG stuff takes a lot of work (especially in D&D 3.5).

The person described above was me about 10 years ago. And now I'm feeling kinda nostalgic for those days when I didn't realize how crappy 3rd edition and my early homebrew attempts were. So I'm going to grab all that horrible stuff, polish it, combine it with some more recent ideas into a new setting, and post it as recurring feature on this blog. So let's dive right in.


The world in question is formally known as "Taurion Effel", Elvish for the "True World". Ancient Elven scholars of the Fourth Age so named the world in contrast to "Kadarion Effel", the "False World", which is commonly known as the Dreamworld. Over time, the name has changed drastically. At the current time, commonly designate the Fifth Age, the most common form of the name survives as Tarfel. Other variants include Tarfil, Taronel, Tarfland, and Tarfiland.

The historians and chroniclers generally recognize that there are four or five vast stretches of time commonly referred to as Ages that are differentiated by environmental characteristics and by which race(s) seemed to be most influential. The commonly recognized Ages are:

• The First Age, or The Age of The Seafolk: Back when Tarfel was almost entirely covered by water, numerous aquatic races forged mighty empires. These races are referred to as the Seafolk. Although such a term is the same as modern parlance for Merfolk and even Sahuagin, the ancient Seafolk were more alien and farther removed from their descendants. As the waters retreated and icecaps formed, these empires crumbled. 
•  The Second Age, or The Age of The Insectoids: As trees spread to the newly-dried land, the air of Tarfel become much richer (in oxygen). Insects and arthropods grew and some among them grew sapient. The greatest of these Insectoid races were the ant-like Formi, the spider-like Aran, and the beetle-like Otubak. Warring between these three and others destroyed much of the tree-choked land. The air became poorer and these races began to literally shrink or die outright.
•  The Third Age, or The Age of The Serpents: A slight warming of Tarfel enabled the reptilian races that were formerly enslaved by the Insectoids to expand into new territories. The most illustrious of these are the Serpentine, who still persist in a greatly weakened state and work tirelessly toward the extinction of Elvenknind. A minor ice age doomed the vast realms of the reptilian races. Now only pitiful remnants clinging to ancient history remain.
•  The Fourth Age, or The Age of Elves: This age was marked by the rule of the Elves. They discovered new magical secrets and devised several ingenious technologies, particularly in the field of astronomy. The Elven empires crumbled after the Great Schism, the Sin of King Tabel, and numerous civil wars. The Elves still remain a strong presence in the modern world.

• The Fifth Age, or The Age of Men: Humans, the bastard race born of the union between Dwarves and Elves, has spread and conquered all over Tarfel. Unlike their predecessors they are far more fractious and disorganized. Some (Human) scholars fear that these division may be their downfall.  
•  The Sixth Age: The Sixth Age is currently mere conjecture. Several kingdoms look upon the notion that Humans will be replaced as an offense against religion, culture, and the crown. Nevertheless, in hidden cabals and cozy studies, those with knowledge of the past puzzle over the portents of the times.